So there it was. 2007. A decision to stop! To make a life change. After 20 years in charge of schools and many more as part of school senior teams, enough was enough.

Everyone said “You won’t be able to stop…” I thought I knew differently. I was wrong.

So I thought I might write up the story. A book might be a bit presumptuous so perhaps a personal record and reflection might be better.  Something that captured my learning, my mistakes so that others might also enjoy the fun and the challenges, the achievement and disappointments. I wanted it to be more than just a personal summary but more a reflection of how we run education and  the inherent values and principles we should live.

Ironically, I have been so busy since the decision to stop, this monologue has only moved to be jottings in a moleskin book. So this is a way of making it happen. 

I trust it won’t be too self-indulgent, but it has been and still is a rich and varied working life. I have been privileged to work with and meet some amazing people, be supported by an incredible family and be surprised every day by brilliant young people. So firstly thanks to all of you.

Reflection from the Savanna:

We move on from Zanzibar to Lolionda in the northern hills of the Serengeti. The opening lines from the film ‘Out of Africa’ come immediately to mind as I step out of our plane. When setting up this trip I jokingly explained to the tour company that I wanted to mirror that scene where they in the film  fly over the Serengeti and over a lake of pink flamingoes in a small plane and here we were doing it. I was amused by the downsizing and could feel the years of stress peeling off with each stage of the journey. We started at Heathrow Terminal 5 – all glass, architecture and electronics. Then on to Dar, with its long-handed administration  and dubious security. The electronics were there, but none seemed to be working. Then on to Zanzibar which was similar but more of a provincial terminal, this time in a 24 seater plane. The next leg to Arusha, under the unmistakable snow-clad Kilimanjaro,  was in a 12 seater plane to a single runway, where we collected our own luggage and walked to a small one-gate terminal baked in the November sun. Next was the ‘Out of Africa’ bit! We climbed into a six seater which flew us out over the savanna to Seronera where the four other passengers disembarked. This was the a gravelly, mud baked strip.

We flew back over the flamingo lined crater lake, and across the lines of  wildebeest and zebra at the start of the migration. Our pilot now took us down to main attractions and talked us through the lines of animals before we arrive at Klein’s Camp Air Strip. It was basically a levelled grass strip with no buildings. Just our safari driver waiting at the edge. We circled twice until a small group of giraffes  cleared the strip. Wow! Brilliant!  Work and education now left well behind!

But the world doesn’t leave you behind even here. Whilst leaving Zanzibar we had a call from my son who lived in Phoenix, Arizona. Because of the 2008 downturn, American Express were taking the opportunity and making 10 000 redundant. His operation was being moved to New York but he had been given a clear indication that they’d much prefer that they took a severance package.

Which brings me to my second reflection and focus – ‘education for life’. In the well-known YouTube clip ‘Shift Happens’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig27w_YIx0s they suggest that today’s learners will have between 10-14 jobs by the time they reach 38; that we need to prepare young people for jobs that don’t exist yet, using technologies that have not ben invented to solve problems that don’t yet exist.

Is that what we do in schools? Is that what the new National Curriculum of 2013 will encourage?Are teachers clear this is what they need to do? Are they equipped to do it? An earlier Futurelab publication described what happens at the moment to students in many schools, they power-down. At home, they use the latest communication wizardry to talk to friends and share ideas. They download software apps at will, they collect music on-line, they create film clips, and amend others. They are sophisticated users of the technology. Schools generally are not. The restrict, manage and ban. They lock computers into special rooms.

But it is much more than technology. I was involved in the training of teachers for the introduction of the new ‘diplomas’. The most important thing we did was to insist that all teachers spent a full day in the workplace in their chosen vocational area. Most were shocked by the environment and the work regime they visited. The workplace has been through such change over the last decade as to render any pre conception many teachers have, as being totally inaccurate.

We cannot equip young people for this world of work without the self-confidence to try new things and have creative and problem solving skills and to have the resilience to see a problem through. Craig Ventnor – leader of the Genome Foundation described in his 2007 Dimbleby Lecture, how he reluctantly came to Science despite a childhood love of nature and experimentation. He described how his school science consisted of experiments and facts that seemed to have little interest or relevance to him. He maintains that we need to let young people devise experiments  that solve the problems to which they need answers.
Similarly, Tony Wagner in his book “The Achievement Gap” despairs of science teaching that ensures young people have the knowledge to pass tests and SATs rather than one that allows them to get their hands dirty and their brains excited. Bringing this creativity and problem solving into the heart of their studies is what we mean by ‘education for life’ and the achievement gap he talks about is between what we actually do with young people rather than what they truly need.

But my son’s situation illustrates another imperative.- an understanding of the global dimension. Decisions taken globally can take little account of local efficacy, and the value and effectiveness of small units or an individuals worth.  Whether it should be like this is irrelevant – it just is. It is the opposite of what is happening in other business or political areas where in Tom Peters words, business units become ‘small’ and ‘agile’. But there are still big business decisions out there that have global implications.

So young people of the 21st century need to have the skills to operate in that environment and understand the impact of political decisions – e.g. US’s fiscal cliff! And of course they should be involved in a whole range of value questions such as “Does it have to be this way?” But above all they need to understand that seeing work as being available in a global rather than national or local dimension is a way of future-proofing their job prospects. I would never have believed just a decade ago that I could be a Swedish head teacher, or my son would work around the world both physically and virtually.

…..The game was everywhere in vast numbers. We saw leopard and several cheetahs. Prides of lions and two kills. There were echelons of migrating wildebeests and zebra migrating south from the Masai Mara to the rains in the southern Serengeti rains.  The landscape was awe-inspiring at both a macro and micro-level. But on  our last day camping on the Serengeti we took a walking safari. Anyone who knows my ‘animal anxiety’ will understand why this was a grand quest for me. But we had our guide , a rifleman and our Masai tribesman with his spear and knifes although this just emphasised how vulnerable us ‘wizari’ are out in the bush.

But this was like turning the volume down – down to small flowers, and animals such as hyraxes and tortoise.Our paths were regularly crossed by the day-to-day life of the Masai as they followed their herds of cattle and goats down to the water holes. You could easily feel the toughness and the magnificence of their way of life. It was a unique experience that no amount of reading or watching TV could ever allow me to empathise with this different culture and lifestyle. I found myself constantly reframing my points of reference and views.

Being able to understand and empathise with other cultures is of course part of that global understanding. But the experience of the last few days reminded me how important it is to give young people a real sense of awe and wonder;a real experience rather than a secondhand manufactured one.

Remember those childish gasps of surprise when young children see things for the first time. As you get older you tend to suppress it or have it suppressed.  “Just grow up!” But WOW was the most common word this week….and something that should and can be a real part of  a whole education. It doesn’t have to be the Serengeti. I was brought up as a lowly geography teacher to embrace Quantitative Geography. The amount of streams I measured, rocks I analysed and slopes I transected in those early days. But I remember deciding that the next trip I took to the Nant Ffrancon valley in North Wales would be different. As we reached the top of the ridge we suddenly saw the valley with its full array of features for the first time. No measuring! The awe and surprise on the faces of these city students  was a joy. I was soon fielding all sorts of questions and ideas about why it was like that. We talked and mused about different theories and how we might be able to test them.They’ll remember their glacial features much better.

But I should have had an appropriate atmospheric poem as well!!

PHOTO: fotpedia.com

 PART THREE: The Last African Days to follow